How Randy Mastro Killed the Kehlani SummerStage Concert—And a Whole Lot More

On a Saturday afternoon in early May, more than a dozen senior members of Mayor Eric Adams's staff jumped on a virtual meeting to discuss a dilemma: what to do about an upcoming SummerStage concert featuring the pro-Palestine R&B singer Kehlani.

According to a person who was on the call, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro declared that he wanted to stop the June 26 Central Park performance, billed as "Pride With Kehlani," and referenced the fact that Cornell University had recently canceled a Kehlani show due to complaints about what Cornell's president described as the outspoken singer's alleged "antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments." 

Mastro, who by that point had been at his job just over a month, and as one of his first acts had helped create the mayor's new Office to Combat Antisemitism, was passionate about why the concert should not happen, according to the source. "It was very righteous: 'We should not be platforming an antisemite.'" 

But a municipal government using the same reasoning as Cornell to shut down a show in a public park might raise serious First Amendment concerns. 

Mastro offered a solution that could sidestep that problem: He could tell the nonprofit that oversees SummerStage, the City Parks Foundation, that they had to pull the show over a "security risk," and if they refused, threaten to cancel the City's entire partnership with SummerStage. 

The person on the call, who like the other sources quoted in this story asked to remain anonymous so they could speak freely about the sensitive inner workings of City government, said that several staffers pointed out that canceling the event might expose the City to free speech litigation, but Mastro brushed those concerns aside.